May 20, 2016

It's the weekend. After an absolutely hellish day at work I just got out of the shower, having washed off all the redbugs and turtle pee.

OK. Perhaps that last bit warrants elaboration.

I got off work an hour late and was walking up to the door when, upon dropping my keys, I bent over to get them and noted something whizz past my head and go "plop"on the porch.

I stood there for a moment slowly processing the fact that something was not right about the the thing that had gone "plop". After a moment, the thing that I did not quite recognize, (but instinctively knew did not belong) sprouted 4 legs and a head and began furtively testing the area.

A turtle had fallen from the sky...and landed on the rubber welcome mat.

What.

The.

Hell?

It was a small mud turtle, not a box turtle or some other type of Testudine that would normally live in a suburban yard, so after determining that he seemed to be uninjured I picked him up and took him to the van, placed the terrified little thing on some paper towels and then drove to a nearby park with a pond. Along the way, the little beast became quite animated precipitating a chase that involved considerable contortions on my part. Eventually. after cunningly luring me under the rear seat, he darted out across the floor of the van with truly astonishing speed, and made a beeline for my bag of Fritos which he deftly entered and buried himself in, no doubt in a spiteful attempt to give me salmonella. Eventually I unfolded myself and got him out of the bag, whereupon he peed like a firehose...as turtles will.

One thing that has bewildered me since I was a child is how a small turtle can contain so much urine...I swear his bladder must be larger than his shell, which should not be possible, but I guess physics is different for sky turtles.

Anyway, I took the presumably now dehydrated shellback to the pond, which involved rather more mucking through pine straw and 8 inch deep mud than I had anticipated.

Now, after my shower I have an opportunity to reflect on the implications of these recent events...

Previously, I had thought that these creatures came from eggs, but it is now apparent that turtles are actually invaders from space, which, I suppose makes sense given that they are in the same zoological family as Gamera.

Of course it's tenuously possible that there is another explanation, perhaps one that involves a hawk, but it makes sense to err on the side of caution.

1
My question to you is... why did you bother to get the turtle out of your fritos in the first place? I mean, once a turtle gets into your fritos, just let 'em go, man, 'cause they ain't yours anymore.

Then he would have been in a bag, and when the golden torrent of happiness flowed forth, it would either have been absorbed by the fritos or contained in the bag.

Finally, once you get the happy turtle, for there's no happy turtle like a turtle in a bag of pee-soaked fritos, to the pond (as opposed to The Pond, which frowns upon turtles, pee-soaked-fritos-bound or not), you could have just dumped the contents into the water/bank/whatever.

The turtle would have done what turtles do in the pond, the geese would have eaten the fritos and gotten heartburn, because screw geese, and you could say that Gamera Jr didn't pee on you. Win-win-win, right there.